Description

A super testpiece of "brow" climbing. The crux is down low pulling a move off the "spoon" hold but things stay exciting all the way to the top as each hard move comes just before clipping the next bolt.

Beautiful moves but may need a bit of brushing off before a send can take place since its rarely climbed and the water streak may be a little dirty.

Location

Park as for the Nose. Down and right from the Nose. Immediately right of the Psych Delusions/Acid Test corner is a black water streak with bolts.

Protection

Awesome masterpiece route by Whitney! Nice to see this written up here Chummer. If I recall correctly. I was visting from Colorado and climbing with Whitney when he did the first free ascent, red point, around 1990 or so. He had already placed all the bolts & had freed everything prior except for getting it totally clean at the crux. He was giving me the tour, as I hadn't climbed at the Glass in years, and we went there to try and polish off the FFA. He took the lead first a went up and took one fall and then lowered of. I told him he better get it because if he didn't I was going to. That was all the extra incentive he needed. Calling me a name I won't repeat here, in classic old school style, he pulled the rope and fired it. I tried leading it after he was done. After a few desperate attempts I was able to barely manage the second free ascent. The route blew me away. It was some really impressive eyebrow and face climbing and was the hardest thing I had ever done at Looking Glass at that point.

It would be nice to think it was 12+, consensus will tell. From what I remember it didn't seem quite as hard as Electric Kool Aid. But that could be the pro issues that factor in on Kool Aid. I think Whitney was calling it 12b or so at the time. Which might have been bit of a sandbag... At the time I thought it was pretty close. Solid 12 for sure and super good climbing. Climbing at the Glass takes some time to get dialed in and this would be a hard flash. A great legacy route put in by a Looking Glass Master!!

Thanks for the history. Great story. I don't live in NC any longer so I don't know if it's getting much traffic. I hope so, it's one of the best hard face routes I can think of. Sporty but not death defying. We use to do foot training in hopes of improving our foot strength for the Glass.

The Glass never used letter grades much but I always thought it was about 5.12b/c. Easier than the Acid Test for sure but totally different. Reach could be a factor in the grade.